I think they should devise a multiplayer system that gives players more control over cards. of course I am not advocating getting rid of the current multiplayer, I am suggesting adding a second multiplayer type. As it stands right now, multiplayer is a hard draw for casual players who are mostly interested in PvP. This is because a lot of the good items are obtained through playing a long long time. Having to farm these items means less flexibility, and a hard entry point. The game already sell these" starter" packs, why not have a full TCG system that is more card based than item based to go along with the current system of more item based and less card based. I would imagine this system would involve generic items with empty slots. The weapon is worth X points, and cards are worth Y points. You can only put cards on that weapon where the points total doesn't exceed X, all 6 slots have to be filled etc. Then monetize the cards for this system. The current player can still play the current ranked PvP. Also, you can trade single player weapons for cards, based on rarity.
Firstly, you'd have to rank every item and card in the game to get your X and Y values. You'd then have to balance test all of the possible 'crafted' items which seems like a massive task to me. In breaking the link between items and cards, you'll remove a large chunk of the flavour the Devs have hand-crafted into the system. I do realise that many people would like a generic item loaded with Obliterating X cards, but I do like the fact that the legendary items have names like Crazy Sal's Halberd and some idea of a backstory. Finally, you will also end up with the very "Pay To Win" system everyone is trying avoid by "monetising" individual cards & items.
1. All the items have X values, so all the crafted items would just give bling. The cards power are already ranked, translating them into numbers should be a small task that require at most 3 days on an excel sheet. they're obviously ranked because I would never find fireball on a lvl 1 common staff. 2. If you read the whole post, this system is COMPLETELY SEPARATE from the current system. The goal is to cater to BOTH the players who like the current system, and players who wants more control. Single player will be completely untouched in my suggestion. All the old item names and such will be retained. 3. Again, please read through the whole post. This new MP is going to run concurrent with the current system. It is NOT replacing the current system, which makes this point completely moot. Also, how is it any more pay-to-win than the current system. Paying customers right now have a distinct advantage by obtaining 50% more from regular chests, and 25% more from epic chests. Assuming a 2:1 ratio, subscribers obtain 37.5% more items. Also, they have access to special treasure hunts, and they can open even more chests. The model I suggested will allo players to obtain cards by playing completely free, as well as pay to get cards. The model can easily be modified to have the exact pace as the current model.
I think the correct way to do this is probably a draft mode. It could be just cards in isolation, but I think it would be better with items (less draft choice points). It would also be a nice way to get some of the rarer items into more casual collections without huge grinds. I envision something like: X players (probably X=4ish) pay Y gold (probably Y = 500ish). These players open a chest. The chest contains ~12 items (1 epic+2rare+3uncommon+6commons). Players pick an item and pass. Repeat 3 times. At the end of the draft, they have 10 minutes to pick three characters (included in entry fee), and equip them. Then they play a swiss tournament, winner gets some pizza. You'll get to add the items you draft to your collection.
Let my opening statement be that this line sounds EXTREMELY arrogant being in Present Perfect. That aside, this system would essentially displace any semblace of strategy and careful builds and instead replace it with something murky and generic. "It would be balanced! There would be more variety!' you might say, but alas, there would be even more repetition. People would just fill their decks with the most consistent combinations, so lets say, 6 Potent Stabs a weapon, can't do that? Well then 6 Penetrating Stabs. Also, while certain cards aren't all that powerful, they just aren't meant to go in large quantities (Lunging Bash, Inspiring Wave or whatever that card was called) which makes balancing even more difficult. Similarly, Drawback cards would be everywhere because they allow effective deckthinning and they don't stack, so drawing multiple doesn't hurts. 3 Freeze and 3 Combustible? Bring it! Can't do that? We'll just repeat a bunch of stuff everywhere. Restrictions breed creativity, and they also stop the game from collapsing into a powercreep hell Can it be balanced? Yes. Would it make sense? Not in the least. There's a pretty unique, and entertaining deckbuilding system which makes you swoon over every single cool drop you get, not a random collecting deck of awesomesauce that doesn't requires any semblance of build experience and brings up more issues than it fixes
Funnily enough, I did read the whole thing. Just because you don't like the answer isn't a reason to assume I'm ignorant. I understand full well you're proposing a system other than the one currently in operation. I was just pointing out that it would be a massive amount of work to balance out your idea of "generic" items with user added cards. What you are proposing is a system whereby you can essentially munchkin your way through. You missed the line where I said the balance task was a big one, possibly due to the glib "3 days with an Excel spreadsheet" crack filling your eyes with tears of laughter. I would be interested to see how you'd balance the power token requirements for items or would you scrap that idea totally? This is an important mechanism in MP at the moment as it prevents me from loading my team with all high value / high power items. I would like to see your stats on how many players like the current system AND want "more control". It seems to me that those two camps are opposite sides of the alignment chart. Also, the idea of "monetising" the cards is the very definition of Pay to Win. If I can afford to buy the exact set of cards that I want and put them on the item I want, then I will have a very real advantage. The current system is still dependent on loot drops, so I cannot guarantee to get my 6 fireball cards unless I spend an inordinate amount of money on chests, and even then, I will be hanging on the RND gods to help me out. When you could use "free pizza" I opened hundreds of chests, literally. I still have the lists of stuff I got and I ended up with multiple copies of pretty much everything but crucially not every item. I did not hold every card in the game and so under your proposed system I could not build my perfect items using that method. I could, however, under your system, buy individual cards for much less time, effort and money to build my munchkin set. Note that there's no trading in the game so I can't take that path as things stand. I also understand that it has nothing to do with SP and nowhere in my reply did I indicate that to be so. Perhaps you're confusing the flavour of items and backstory with SP? If that's the case I don't understand how the "old item names and such" will be retained in your MP system. The Staff Of A Million Fireballs and Staff Of Fireballs are different items but under your system the Staff of a Million Fireballs could contain 6x Frost Jolt and the Staff of Fireballs 3x Obliterating Hack and 3x Smoke Bomb, for example, rendering the name / flavour / backstory moot. Keeping track of an item called one thing and having an infinite variety of card items added to it would be a major bit of work, I think. You would have to maintain a database of each unique version of each item and which cards are currently attached to it and which player(s) have this item, which is not something I'd like to do or manage. Adding or changing items and cards would become an exercise in futility as you would then need to rebalance all of the xty number of items "hand crafted" under your system. Also, if you retain the "old item names and such" you would have to make sure that there do not enter the item in the current SP / MP setup and again, that's not something I'd like to manage and maintain. For the tl:dr - too much work and it would break the game in many ways.
I don't understand why people are missing my most important point of the whole post, going to just bold my main point so people can at least see it: I am not proposing a system that I think is better than the current one, nor am I trying to replace the current system. What I am proposing is a way to reach out to players who prefer to play this game another (but similar) way. This proposal is more of a marketing tool to give players more ways to play, thus getting the game more funds, as well as increase the player base. I don't understand how quotes such as "brings up more issues than it fixes" comes up. I am NOT trying to fix any issues with the current system. Example: Magic: the gathering hosts tournaments with many different formats (XYZ block, limited, standard, etc.). The company is trying to reach out to as many players as they can, why would a game like card hunter not try to do so? 1. On monetizing, you are showing misunderstandings of some of my points, so I will try to explain more clearly (if my points were as you understood, then you are correct). Basically, you would obtain these cards at the exact same rate as the current system (whether you spend money or not). This gives players choices of either play more for these rewards, or pay to get more, the EXACT same business model as the current system. Example: you can now choose for a card pack loot or a chest for playing single player. Regular card pack would give you 2 random cards, and if you subscribe, you get a third one (like the current system). Basically, my proposal would copy the exact same business model as the current one. 2. The whole point is to have item specific cards. Example, equipping a generic spear will not allow access to obliterating hack, but polearm slash and tricky stabs. The Dev team basically make these cards, and have to figure out what cards to put on an item, and then they have to figure out how balanced an item is. This creates a huge amount of inflexibility in terms of devising strategy (as massive amount of combinations are lost). I will give a brief example (including power gems, and numbers are not final): A Spear is worth 20 points. Cards are worth 5 purple, 4 gold, 3 silver, 2 bronze, 0 black, -1 black. Power gems are decided by players where to put them. Gold power gems are worth + 2 points maximum to weapon (and the most powerful cards would require power gems), and blue is +1 etc. This would make power gems very important in decisions. The problem with rare cards, they can have a clause that rare cards require at least a blue gem etc. etc. The system enables easy to understand, hard to master. 3. I don't agree this system is hard to develop. The current system is a HUGE hassle to develop. This is because for each item they put into the game, they have to put a lot of thoughts into what cards to put on these items, then figure out if it would break MP with certain combinations, and then put it out for testing. Comparing the 2 systems, the inflexible system is very hard to develop for, and limits creativity in my opinion.
I haven't posted too much in topics like this. I don't feel there's much I could contribute, and, besides, lots of people wind up just arguing unnecessarily. But silence communicates nothing, so lemme explain just once. Your brainstorming is awesome. And I'm NOT being sarcastic when I say that. And what you're trying to do is "give feedback" during the "beta feedback phase" of a project, right? That's exactly what you should be doing, and it's also awesome. But the true fate of this thread, and many others like it, is to do two things: get general discussion, and get you something to store on your computer until a future day when you're designing a game. The idea is not likely to be implemented now because you're proposing a fundamental change to the system. Here, consider these popular topics: "I don't like cards connected to items. Eliminate that system." "I don't like actions dependent on random draws. Eliminate randomness." "I don't like power restrictions on items. Eliminate that system." "I don't like how level interacts with XP gain and such. Eliminate level dependencies." "I don't like Armor/Blocks/whatever is defeating me right now. Eliminate that system." . . . And then all you have to do is replace the words "eliminate that system" with "here, I have a suggested alternative that surely will make this game more popular" and you'll have threads like the current one. You, like the rest of us, have a particular game you'd like to play. Making suggestions about it is great, because maybe this will inspire the developers. But feedback is supposed to improve THIS game, not YOUR game. If you have such a well-formed idea for a game, you really should hang onto it until some day you are developing your own game and you can make it the way you want.
Alright, in order: Card Hunter is still in beta, and developers are surely finding their own ways to do this while continuing in the spirit of the game. Custom maps are a proof of this. I believe the dev team has mentioned they want to implement a drafting system (don´t quote me on this, woozy memory), and there are myriads of ways the game can expand without fundamentally changing the rules of deckbuilding. Look at MtG, several kitchen table formats like Commander and Planechase, they might have deckbuilding restrictions or aditional cards but they don´t tell you to break the card down into its base components Here are two main differences: There are a bayillion items in this game, but only so many cards. Since a single item nets you either 6 or 3 cards, you´d be getting cards at a rough 4th of the rate, however, with the added versatility we come to another standstill. Getting duplicates of bad cards is REALLY painful. I don´t mind getting items with, lets say, Weak Strike, Fumble, Brain Burn or Unstable Bolt, but getting a bunch of solo Weak Strikes sounds downright depressing. Usually when i get bad items, i just give them to low level characters, sell them, or stack them up because they look pretty Similarly, the ingame market would be very different with cards being spread out in so many power-levels, so the market system would have to be reevalued, ergo, changes the business model. Having to choose from both would also split the playerbase in half So in the line of arbitrariety, what stops you from adding certain missfired cards to your items? Staffs can have Brain Burn, but they can also have Bash. Lets add a bunch of Mighty Bash and Brain Burns and you have an unbalanced item for battle wizards! Swords CAN have Combustible, i mean look at Flaming Sword! An unique piece of work that can suddenly be everywhere! Lets give our Hackmaster 2.0 4 Combustible and 2 Almighty Hack! Also, you do realize this puts stress on the dev team where you shouldn´t. They shouldn´t be separating everything into drab, written classes, but rather, flavorful combinations. A system like this would be min-maxed to high heavens. While you realistically could call the Bash/Burn hammer mentioned earlier the "Brainbane Battlestaff" and that other sword "Gunpower´s Justice", they would seem forced in design and would make for boring items designwise This is also not very handy because some cards are really, REALLY powerful in a bunch. For instance, Silver is worth 3 in this example, heck, lets say it be worth 4. Bash is a common card, it is on very common items, so it isn´t that strong, is it? Wrong, it is downright INSANE on large quantities, which is the reason Hammer Of Bashing costs GG. Most of the items that have 6 or something cost a lot of points or have drawbacks. You know what else works like that? Thigns that are diverse. Temple Blade has 5 different cards and a drawback and it is overvalued because of its granted versatlity. Finding the balancing act would be even more stressful and would, again, put more focus from the dev team where it shouldn´t I don´t know about the game´s engine, but i know a fair bit of coding. Let me tell you what probably takes to create an item in a well optimized system in pseudo-code ItemRS.AddToDatabase(Type, Level, Rarity, Tokens, Card1, Card2, Card3, Card4, Card5, Card6, Name, Image.jpg) So, from the coding standpoint, its easy. From the balance standpoint? They´ve been doing it pretty well, even with some cards and items people consider missteps (Rageblood Dagger I´m looking at you). It is not very difficult to imagine interesting combinations, and balancewise, it is not difficult to imagine what the item would be costed like because, being such a large ammount of items, there´s a large ammount of references, and even if the item is underpowered it is just assigned to another power level, there are cards with very similar card sets, and one is better than the other, that´s single player progression. Also, there are so many cards that untapped interesting combinations are probably everywhere and i don´t think they are humanly exhaustable. (Heck, i would personally love to post Item ideas, but i´ve restrained from doing so because i know there´s some IP legal issues around these kind of work). Even then, if the item is not up to snuff for multiplayer, it´ll probably find heart in some strategies because the system is made to do so. For instance, one of my favorite items has to be Sorcerer´s Staff, i love the flavor of a drawback-ridden staff that just obliterates stuff with arcane energy as well as its power level, even if it is a crummy thing to bring to a gun fight. Similarly, Rotting Club is also an old favorite, having a very simple, if unatractive cardset, but that has been finding space in my strategies with relative ease. The restrictive, inflexible system has you using cards you wouldn´t otherwise poke with a 10-foot long stick, while making you piece together a strategy, so you have to be flexible around and inflexible system, raising the skillcap and variance of the game. If it somehow turns out to be overpowered, it is because the players managed to make it so, i doubt Blue Manchu would intentionally release a card with, lets say, 6 Freeze for lulz. Rageblood is the king because players know how good step cards are, Staff of Winter is the king because players know how good it is at countering Step, no card is the king because Blue Manchu made it so, not even lvl 18 legendaries (arguable, i know). So with the current system hard to develop and this new, proposed one requiring to rethink a lot of factors about the game, i´d say we don´t make a copy the game and break it just to waste time
